Woman playing the Tanbur in a painting from the Hasht Behesht Palace in Isfahan, Iran, 1669.
String instrument
Classification	Plucked
Related instruments
Tar (lute), Setar

For other uses, see Tanbur (disambiguation).

The term tanbūr (Persian: تنبور) can refer to various long-necked, fretted lutes originating in the Middle East or Central Asia.^[1] According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "terminology presents a complicated situation. Nowadays the term tanbur (or tambur) is applied to a variety of distinct and related long-necked lutes used in art and folk traditions. Similar or identical instruments are also known by other terms."^[1]

Contents 1 Origins 2 Types 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Origins

The modern Turkish Tanbur is practically identical to the ancient Greek pandouris. From Byzantine times it was called the tambouras.

However one study has identified the name "tanbūr" as being derived from pandur, a Sumerian term for long-necked lutes.^[2] Lutes have been present in Mesopotamia since the Akkadian era, or the third millennium BCE.^[1]

The tanbur was already in use in the Sassanian period (5th-6th CE).^[3]. In the tenth century CE Al-Farabi described a Baghdad tunbūr, distributed south and west of Baghdad, and a Khorasan tunbūr found in Persia.^[1] This distinction may be the source of modern differentiation between Arabic instruments, derived from the Baghdad tunbūr, and those found in northern Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey, from the Khorasan tunbūr.^[1]

Later the Kurdish tanbur became associated with the music of the Ahl-e Haqq or "People of the Real", a primarily Kurdish ghulat religious movement similar to a Sufi order, where it is called the tembûr.^[4]. It is currently the only musical instrument used in Ahl-e Haqq rituals, and practitioners venerate tembûrs as sacred objects.^[5]

The tembûr measures 80 cm in height and 16 cm in breadth.^[4] The resonator is pear-shaped and made of either a single piece or multiple carvels of mulberry wood.^[4] The neck is made of walnut and has fourteen frets, arranged in a semi-tempered chromatic scale.^[4] It has two steel strings tuned in fifth, fourth, or second intervals.^[4][5] The higher string may be double-coursed.^[4][5]

[edit] Types

The Persian name spread widely, eventually taking in

• Long-necked lutes used in Central Asian music such as the Dombura and the classical Turkish tambur as well as the Kurdish tembûr.^[1][5] Until the early twentieth century, the names chambar and jumbush were applied to instruments in northern Iraq.^[1] In India the name was applied to the tambura, a fretless drone lute.^[1]

• Similar instruments of East European music including the tambour and the domra.

The name also came to apply to several other instruments of different classes including

• The tanbura, a bowl lyre found in Iraq, Egypt, and the Sudan.^[1]
• In western Europe the name attached itself to drums such as the tabor and the tambourine^[6]

Furthermore, the fretted Tanbur influenced the design of many instruments other than those above, notably;

• The saz (Persian: "instrument") is found in the Caucasus, Turkey, northern Syria, western Iraq, and Southeast Europe.^[1] In Turkey, the terms bağlama and saz both refer to a long-necked lute used in folk music.^[1] Closely related are the Greek bouzouki and the buzuq, an instrument found in urban areas such as Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut.^[1]
  • The dutar and setar, found in Iran and Central Asia, are derived from the Khorosanian tunbūr.^[1]
• The Shirvan tanbur has a pear-shaped form and belongs to the same family of instruments as the saz. The total length of the tanbur is 940 mm. The length of the body is 385 mm, the width is 200 mm and the height is 135 mm. The length of the neck is 340 mm, and the length of the head is 120 mm. The Shirvan tanbur ranges from the "do" of the first octave to the "mi" of the second octave.

[edit] See also

• Category:Eastern lutes players

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Atlas of Plucked Instruments: Central Asia